Minus Related Quotes

Charles Darwin came to marriage with some trepidation. Of course he studied it carefully, cataloging the pluses and minuses of the connubial state. His list included the following: PROS: Constant companion and friend in old age Object to be beloved and played with Better than a dog anyhow Someone to take care of house Charms of music and female chitchat Picture self with a nice, soft wife on a sofa with a good fire CONS: Freedom to go where one liked Not forced to visit relatives Perhaps quarreling Expense and anxiety of children Cannot read in the evenings Fatness and idleness Less money for books

For example, the force of electricity between two charged objects looks just like the law of gravitation: the force of electricity is a constant, with a minus sign, times the product of the charges, and varies inversely as the square of the distance. It is in the opposite direction-likes repel. But is it still not very remarkable that the two laws involve the same function of distance? Perhaps gravitation and electricity are much more closely related than we think. Many attempts have been made to unify them; the so called unified-field theory is only a very elegant attempt to combine electricity and gravitation; but, in comparing gravitation and electricity , the most interesting thing is the relative strengths of the forces. Any theory that contains them both must also deduce how strong the gravity is.

A common characteristic of forms of money throughout history is the presence of some mechanism to restrain the production of new units of the good to maintain the value of the existing units. The relative difficulty of producing new monetary units determines the hardness of money: money whose supply is hard to increase is known as hard money, while easy money is money whose supply is amenable to large increases. We can understand money's hardness through understanding two distinct quantities related to the supply of a good: (1) the stock, which is its existing supply, consisting of everything that has been produced in the past, minus everything that has been consumed or destroyed; and (2) the flow, which is the extra production that will be made in the next time period. The ratio between the stock and flow is a reliable indicator of a good's hardness as money, and how well it is suited to playing a monetary role.

An entire horde, a generation of open-minded, healthy lads pounces upon the work of diseased genius, genialized by disease, admires and praises it, raises it to the skies, perpetuates it, transmutes it, and bequeathes it to civilization, which does not live on the home-baked bread of health alone. They all swear by the name of the great invalid, thanks to whose madness they no longer need to be mad. Their healthfulness feeds upon his madness and in them he will become healthy. In other words, certain attainments of the soul and the intellect are impossible without disease, without insanity, without spiritual crime, and the great invalids are crucified victims, sacrificed to humanity and its advancement, to the broadening of its feeling and knowledge – in short, to its more sublime health. They force us to re-evaluate the concepts of 'disease' and 'health,' the relation of sickness and life, they teach us to be cautious in our approach to the idea of disease, for we are too prone always to give it a biological minus sign.

The modern educational system provides numerous other examples of reality bowing down to written records. When measuring the width of my desk, the yardstick I am using matters little. My desk remains the same width regardless of whether I say it is 200 centimetres or 78.74 inches. However, when bureaucracies measure people, the yardsticks they choose make all the difference. When schools began assessing people according to precise marks, the lives of millions of students and teachers changed dramatically. Marks are a relatively new invention. Hunter-gatherers were never marked for their achievements, and even thousands of years after the Agricultural Revolution, few educational establishments used precise marks. A medieval apprentice cobbler did not receive at the end of the year a piece of paper saying he has got an A on shoelaces but a C minus on buckles. An undergraduate in Shakespeare’s day left Oxford with one of only two possible results – with a degree, or without one. Nobody thought of giving one student a final mark of 74 and another student 88.6

The first cut at the problem—the simplest but still eye-opening—is to ask how much income would have to be transferred from rich countries to poor countries to lift all of the world’s extreme poor to an income level sufficient to meet basic needs. Martin Ravallion and his colleagues on the World Bank’s poverty team have gathered data to address this question, at least approximately. The World Bank estimates that meeting basic needs requires $1.08 per day per person, measured in 1993 purchasing-power adjusted prices. Using household surveys, the Ravallion team has calculated the numbers of poor people around the world who live below that threshold, and the average incomes of those poor. According to the Bank’s estimates, 1.1 billion people lived below the $1.08 level as of 2001, with an average income of $0.77 per day, or $281 per year. More important, the poor had a shortfall relative to basic needs of $0.31 per day ($1.08 minus $0.77), or $113 per year. Worldwide, the total income shortfall of the poor in 2001 was therefore $113 per year per person multiplied by 1.1 billion people, or $124 billion. Using the same accounting units (1993 purchasing power adjusted U.S. dollars), the income of the twenty-two donor countries of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in 2001 was $20.2 trillion. Thus a transfer of 0.6 percent of donor income, amounting to $124 billion, would in theory raise all 1.1 billion of the world’s extreme poor to the basic-needs level. Notably, this transfer could be accomplished within the 0.7 percent of the GNP target of the donor countries. That transfer would not have been possible in 1980, when the numbers of the extreme poor were larger (1.5 billion) and the incomes of the rich countries considerably smaller. Back in 1981, the total income gap was around $208 billion (again, measured in 1993 purchasing power prices) and the combined donor country GNP was $13.2 trillion. Then it would have required 1.6 percent of donor income in transfers to raise the extreme poor to the basic-needs level.

The modern educational system provides numerous other examples of reality bowing down to written records. When measuring the width of my desk, the yardstick I am using matters little. My desk remains the same width regardless of whether I say it is 200 centimetres or 78.74 inches. However, when bureaucracies measure people, the yardsticks they choose make all the difference. When schools began assessing people according to precise marks, the lives of millions of students and teachers changed dramatically. Marks are a relatively new invention. Hunter-gatherers were never marked for their achievements, and even thousands of years after the Agricultural Revolution, few educational establishments used precise marks. A medieval apprentice cobbler did not receive at the end of the year a piece of paper saying he has got an A on shoelaces but a C minus on buckles. An undergraduate in Shakespeare’s day left Oxford with one of only two possible results – with a degree, or without one. Nobody thought of giving one student a final mark of 74 and another student 88.6 Credit 1.24 24. A European map of Africa from the mid-nineteenth century. The Europeans knew very little about the African interior, which did not prevent them from dividing the continent and drawing its borders. Only the mass educational systems of the industrial age began using precise marks on a regular basis. Since both factories and government ministries became accustomed to thinking in the language of numbers, schools followed suit. They started to gauge the worth of each student according to his or her average mark, whereas the worth of each teacher and principal was judged according to the school’s overall average. Once bureaucrats adopted this yardstick, reality was transformed. Originally, schools were supposed to focus on enlightening and educating students, and marks were merely a means of measuring success. But naturally enough, schools soon began focusing on getting high marks. As every child, teacher and inspector knows, the skills required to get high marks in an exam are not the same as a true understanding of literature, biology or mathematics. Every child, teacher and inspector also knows that when forced to choose between the two, most schools will go for the marks.

By now, though, it had been a steep learning curve, he was fairly well versed on the basics of how clearing worked: When a customer bought shares in a stock on Robinhood — say, GameStop — at a specific price, the order was first sent to Robinhood's in-house clearing brokerage, who in turn bundled the trade to a market maker for execution. The trade was then brought to a clearinghouse, who oversaw the trade all the way to the settlement. During this time period, the trade itself needed to be 'insured' against anything that might go wrong, such as some sort of systemic collapse or a default by either party — although in reality, in regulated markets, this seemed extremely unlikely. While the customer's money was temporarily put aside, essentially in an untouchable safe, for the two days it took for the clearing agency to verify that both parties were able to provide what they had agreed upon — the brokerage house, Robinhood — had to insure the deal with a deposit; money of its own, separate from the money that the customer had provided, that could be used to guarantee the value of the trade. In financial parlance, this 'collateral' was known as VAR — or value at risk. For a single trade of a simple asset, it would have been relatively easy to know how much the brokerage would need to deposit to insure the situation; the risk of something going wrong would be small, and the total value would be simple to calculate. If GME was trading at $400 a share and a customer wanted ten shares, there was $4000 at risk, plus or minus some nominal amount due to minute vagaries in market fluctuations during the two-day period before settlement. In such a simple situation, Robinhood might be asked to put up $4000 and change — in addition to the $4000 of the customer's buy order, which remained locked in the safe. The deposit requirement calculation grew more complicated as layers were added onto the trading situation. A single trade had low inherent risk; multiplied to millions of trades, the risk profile began to change. The more volatile the stock — in price and/or volume — the riskier a buy or sell became. Of course, the NSCC did not make these calculations by hand; they used sophisticated algorithms to digest the numerous inputs coming in from the trade — type of equity, volume, current volatility, where it fit into a brokerage's portfolio as a whole — and spit out a 'recommendation' of what sort of deposit would protect the trade. And this process was entirely automated; the brokerage house would continually run its trading activity through the federal clearing system and would receive its updated deposit requirements as often as every fifteen minutes while the market was open. Premarket during a trading week, that number would come in at 5:11 a.m. East Coast time, usually right as Jim, in Orlando, was finishing his morning coffee. Robinhood would then have until 10:00 a.m. to satisfy the deposit requirement for the upcoming day of trading — or risk being in default, which could lead to an immediate shutdown of all operations. Usually, the deposit requirement was tied closely to the actual dollars being 'spent' on the trades; a near equal number of buys and sells in a brokerage house's trading profile lowered its overall risk, and though volatility was common, especially in the past half-decade, even a two-day settlement period came with an acceptable level of confidence that nobody would fail to deliver on their trades.

When we fight, he attacks everything and everybody remotely related to me. My parents. The medical profession because I’m a nurse. The entire state of Florida, where I grew up. All Southerners. All blondes. All women. Hell, all earthlings. Minus, of course, himself.” —Trixie, Washington, DC

Pro-risk, aggressive investors, for example, should be expected to make more than the index in good times and lose more in bad times. This is where beta comes in. By the word beta, theory means relative volatility, or the relative responsiveness of the portfolio return to the market return. A portfolio with a beta above 1 is expected to be more volatile than the reference market, and a beta below 1 means it’ll be less volatile. Multiply the market return by the beta and you’ll get the return that a given portfolio should be expected to achieve, omitting nonsystematic sources of risk. If the market is up 15 percent, a portfolio with a beta of 1.2 should return 18 percent (plus or minus alpha). Theory looks at this information and says the increased return is explained by the increase in beta, or systematic risk. It also says returns don’t increase to compensate for risk other than systematic risk. Why don’t they? According to theory, the risk that markets compensate for is the risk that is intrinsic and inescapable in investing: systematic or “non-diversifiable” risk. The rest of risk comes from decisions to hold individual stocks: non-systematic risk. Since that risk can be eliminated by diversifying, why should investors be compensated with additional return for bearing it? According to theory, then, the formula for explaining portfolio performance (y) is as follows: y = α + βx Here α is the symbol for alpha, β stands for beta, and x is the return of the market. The market-related return of the portfolio is equal to its beta times the market return, and alpha (skill-related return) is added to arrive at the total return (of course, theory says there’s no such thing as alpha). Although I dismiss the identity between risk and volatility, I insist on considering a portfolio’s return in the light of its overall riskiness, as discussed earlier. A manager who earned 18 percent with a risky portfolio isn’t necessarily superior to one who earned 15 percent with a lower-risk portfolio. Risk-adjusted return holds the key, even though—since risk other than volatility can’t be quantified—I feel it is best assessed judgmentally, not calculated scientifically.

Through the Fire by Raj Lowenstein Trafford Publishing reviewed by Anita Lock "Beware the Abomination." After initially treating Michael Braun for wounds resulting from a brutal attack, David and Kelly Hartman—a physician and nurse respectively, as well as a gay, married couple—feel that the best place for her (yes, a she despite the masculine name) to recover is at the condo of David's twin brother, Dan. Dan, an overworked detective, ignores David's frantic texts and is shocked when he wakes to find a stunningly beautiful but battered woman sleeping upstairs. Michael is also a mute who communicates through American Sign Language (ASL), a language in which Dan happens to be an expert. Although the two eventually fall in love, there is more to Michael's past that Dan is aware of until he receives information from none other than Michael's abuser. Raj Lowenstein presents a romantic thriller that appears more disturbingly real than fiction. Set largely in Texas, Lowenstein's plot has a bit of a Law and Order feel to it—minus the court and prison scenes. Laced with gender-related issues and replete with a tight cast, Lowenstein's storyline zeroes in on Dan and his unexpected romance with Michael amid peculiar situations. Lowenstein punctuates her thought-provoking, third-person narrative with the sinister and hideous presence of Catfish, whose persona is a paradox to say the least. Key to Lowenstein's writing style is the use of engaging dialogue to generate dynamic characters who are developing their relationships and facing life's challenges. Lowenstein aptly fashions her well-developed cast within cliff-hanging chapters that alternate between unanticipated character scenes. Scenes are filled with back stories, steamy romantic episodes, investigations, the evil machinations of Catfish, and are all used in the deliberate build-up to the novel's intense and unnerving apogee. Kudos to Lowenstein for creating an edgy and eye-opening debut! RECOMMENDED by the US Review

Nilsson disembarked from the rear of the massive aircraft on wobbly legs, stepping from the relative warmth of the cargo hold into an ice box, the predawn temperature—a snot-freezing minus forty-nine.

The perceived difficulty of a challenge—the difficulty that the player actually senses, and the type we are most concerned with—consists of the relative difficulty minus the player’s experience at meeting such challenges. Remembering that relative difficulty is absolute difficulty minus power provided, we can put all these factors together into a single equation such that perceived difficulty = absolute difficulty - (power provided + in-game experience)

Cambodian business succeeds by employing more relatives. That’s its purpose, it profits by supporting more family: Income minus Expenses equals Employment.

The ramifications of Pythagoras' theorem have revolutionized twentieth century theoretical physics in many ways. For example, Minkowski discovered that Einstein's special theory of relativity could be represented by four-dimensional pseudo-Euclidean geometry where time is represented as the fourth dimension and a minus sign is introduced into Pythagoras' law. When gravitation is present, Einstein proposed that Minkowski's geometry must be "curved", the pseudo-Euclidean structure holding only locally at each point. A complex vector space having a natural generalization of the Pythagorean structure (defined over functions in an abstract space rather than geometrical points in the familiar Euclidean space) is known as Hilbert space and forms the basis of quantum mechanics. It is remarkable to think that the two pillars of twentieth century physics, relativity and quantum theory, both have their basis in mathematical structures based on a theorem formulated by an eccentric mathematician over two and a half thousand years ago.